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Does God Exist?

 
 
 
 
 
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A free ebook produced by the United Church of God.

Pdf_16x16 32 Pages

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12/18/2006
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ask412 about 1 year ago

Faith, the assured expectation of 'things hoped' for. Keep on hoping, it's not enough for me. As intelligent human beings, we can do more than base life around a 'hope'. We use expectation as a motivator, but to base life on a 'hope', we as a species are way past that. That is a mindset of 'hunter gathers', and later 'agricultural societies', but not where those in the 'quantum era' are [QE = 1920 - to present day]

JIM over 2 years ago

God exist in the people without them there is no God and with out God there is no people so why do we keep on killing pur God in his Own name

J-SUN over 2 years ago

"Radical Christians will risk their lives to spread Christianity to places it's never been before"

Drug dealers will risk their life to get drugs to places it's never been before. I know it’s an extreme example but every single person in this entire world “risks” something. Something’s are small and some large. Faith is all about risk! “Walk by faith and not by sight”, you can die tomorrow, and God forbid that, but you never know when it will be your time. You take a risk by not having faith as well...

Now if you knew the airplane was going to crash...For certain it was going to!...And there is enough parachutes for all the passengers...Will you not grab one? If faith is that parachute, why doesn’t everyone grab it?

Investigate...

Before it is too late,

what do you have to loose?

Jedi Ninja over 2 years ago

Quote: "if you believe in God purely because it is 'safer' to believe in a God than to not believe, surely your God will see right through that and realise that you don't believe in him on his so called merits, rather, you believe in him in a purely selfish way so that you will be saved. I'm pretty sure your God wont be too happy about your selfish attitude."

I understand, Andrew, and to be honest, it troubles me also. I can only hope and pray that my faith will grow stronger as I continue this spiritual journey, endeavoring to be a better disciple of the lord.

As for the peacefulness of Christianity, all people do evil things because deep down, all people are sinful. That's no excuse for violent actions. Violence in the name of any religion, or any thing, is wrong. Jesus preached a message of pacifism. Still, because of our sinful nature, even people who call themselves Christians have committed violent crimes. Fortunately, I don't base my beliefs on what other Christians do, but on the teachings of Jesus. I'm not an expert on Islam, but I know that it teaches some radically violent concepts such as Jihad. And Judaism teaches "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." But Jesus taught us to love our enemies. That is what I would call a peaceful religion. I'm sure there are other peaceful religions out there. But I know that Christianity is among the most nonviolent.

Even atheists admit that Pascal's Wager is an excellent argument for the existence of God. I have searched for an equally excellent counter-argument, but have found none. There is an "atheist's wager" but it is useless because it assumes that God will judge us by our works, but God considers faith to be more important.

Andrew over 2 years ago

"radical Christians will risk their lives to spread Christianity to places it's never been before, they don't kill others for their religion as radical Muslims and even radical Jews do." Are you forgetting the horrible acts of sectarian violence committed by the protestants and catholics in Northern Ireland? Hardly what I would call a peaceful religion Elton. And I don't buy the whole pascal's wager thing you've been talking about, if you believe in God purely because it is "safer" to believe in a God than to not believe, surely your God will see right through that and realise that you don't believe in him on his so called merits, rather, you believe in him in a purely selfish way so that you will be saved. I'm pretty sure your God wont be too happy about your selfish attitude.

J-SUN over 2 years ago

I think it is illogical to not believe in God. I think the question is not, does God exist? But what does He want with us? Or Does He want anything with us? All religions claim exclusivity...Meaning they all claim to be the IT Religion...I am also a Christian not because that is the religion I grew up with, but like Matthew said “It just makes sense to me”. And as far as feelings are concerned, because I think intelligent conversation can only do so much, my heart feels trusted with the Christian God. No other “Guru” in any religion made the claims that Jesus made. “To be one with God.” Muhammad claimed only to be a prophet. Buddha never claimed to be divine. And not only did Jesus claim, “I am the Truth, The Way, The Life...No ones comes to the Father except by Me” but he vindicated it by His walk, and compassion, healings, wisdom, etc.... Muhammad, which I don’t know too much about, was one giant contradiction to himself. In other words, his walk had “no fruit” and he didn’t show compassion for women and children and actually gave an order that they be enslaved. He also could not cast out demons, nor heal anyone. Jesus, on the other hand, would walk to lepers and heal them, and demons would be cast out with a word. When I look at the person of Jesus and what he did for everyone, my heart just hurts. He was the only man born to die, those healings where out of compassion!! I wont say too much because I want all who read this to read the comment below. Don’t want to exhaust anyone.

Jedi Ninja over 2 years ago

ag,
First of all, I was raised Christian, but that is not the main reason I am a Christian. While radical Christians will risk their lives to spread Christianity to places it's never been before, they don't kill others for their religion as radical Muslims and even radical Jews do. For this reason I think Christianity is a more peaceful religion, although you could say the same thing about Buddhism or Taoism.
But Christians also have a sense of enthusiam that's not found in other religions. For instance, there are tons of Christian radio and television stations, while there are very few Muslim or Jewish stations. Perhaps that is simply because I live in the United States, where the majority of those who believe in God are Christian.
Perhaps the main reason I am Christian is that the Bible is truly a very remarkable book. It was written over milleniums by many different men, yet everything fits together in perfect harmony. Prophecies in the Old Testament regarding the birth, life, death, and ressurection of Jesus Christ were fulfilled in the New Testament. Many other prophecies have been fulfilled in recent history, for instance, the dispersion of the Jews around the world, and their return to Israel which happened in 1948. I can't really understand why Jews still follow Judaism, when so many prophecies in the Old Testament (predicting that Christ would be born from a virgin in Bethlehem, and he would die for our sins, etc.) were fulfilled perfectly by Jesus. I can't understand why they don't think he was the Messiah. Perhaps they were expecting the world to be transformed into a perfect paradise when the Messiah comes and established the Kingdom of God on earth. But the Bible, I think even in the Old Testament, makes it clear this won't happen until Jesus returns a second time.
Unlike some religions, the Bible can be interpreted in ways that don't contradict science. I myself am a big supporter of science. I find the study of apologetics (finding scientific proof of the Bible) very interesting. Although I don't always agree with everything they say, I think creation scientists like Kent Hovind and Ken Ham have found some good evidence for the validity of the Bible, and for creationism, and I think their findings should be at least considered by the secular scientific community, instead of just disregarded as the ramblings of a few fundamentalists. Unlike many Christian fundamentalists, I do believe that the earth is billions of years old. I believe the Gap Theory, which fits an old earth with the Genesis account of Creation. This theory is explained in the last few pages of "Creation or Evolution: Does it Really Matter What You Believe," which is another ebook I've uploaded to Scribd.
According to Pascal's wager, it's better to believe in the existence of a God then to believe that there is no God. So, according to Pascal, it would be better to believe in any religion then no religion. And it w...

ag over 2 years ago

Matthew,
I must say I was pleasantly surprised to hear your reasonable approach to the evolutionary and astronomical arguments advanced in this ebook.
It is actually rather unusual for me to run across religious Christians who have a sufficiently open mind to understand the anthropic principle and other issues in order to come to an informed opinion on the matter.

Your response to my criticisms of the laws of Leviticus as seen by our 21st century ethical sensibilities are totally justified. I agree that from a moral perspective the New Testament is a huge improvement over the Old Testament, and that therefore, it is inappropriate to question a Christian's opinion of Biblical morality based on the weirdness of the Old Testament. There are still ethical issues in the New Testament one could pick on, but I will spare the trouble, as that's not really the issue.

I have one question for you, though, really more out of curiosity than anything else. You said that your own belief stems from a "Pascals's Wager" sort of argument, that it is safer to believe in God. My question is this: the Christian God is not the only one supposed to exist. Over a billion people believe in Allah, the Muslim God, and I'm pretty sure that according to them, following Christian traditions definitely dooms you to an eternity in Hell. Why is it that you feel it safer to put your belief in the Christian God than the Muslim God?

In any case, even though I - as I'm sure you realize - do not believe in God, I, like Richard Dawkins, have no qualms in wishing you a Merry Christmas. Take care.

Jedi Ninja over 2 years ago

ag, first of all I just want to make it clear that I didn't write this, it's a free ebook written by the United Church of God.

I agree with you about the anthropic principle. Of course we will be on a planet that is perfectly tuned to support life. If we weren't, we wouldn't be alive to notice that our planet doesn't support life. While most planets don't support life like earth does, when one considers the infinite vastness of space, there's bound to be plenty of other earthlife planets out there.

The anthropic principle also proves wrong some of the so called "evidences" for creationism that involve the complexity of the human body. If we weren't this complex, we wouldn't be intellegent enough to notice.

I also agree that the quote from Hawking was taken out of context. I am fully aware that Hawking is an athiest.

This book ends up abandoning it's original questions simply because the original questions cannot be answered with scientific proof. It is not scientifically proven that God exists. But it also cannot be proven that God does not exist. I am a Christian not because the existence of God is proven, but because I feel it is safer to believe in God, in case He does exist.

As for Leviticus, those laws (and all biblical laws in the Old Testament) are part of the Old Covenent that God made with man, beginning in the time of Moses. These laws no longer apply today. As it says in Luke 16:16, "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." In other words, the Old Testament law lasted until John, and after John we now preach the kingdom of God and follow the teachings of Christ, which basically explained how to gain entrance into the eternal kingdom of God that will come to earth when Christ returns. Since Jews still follow the Old Testament law, I wonder why they don't make animal sacrifices.

Most Christians follow the Ten Commandments. So why are they not following the rest of the Old Testament law (animal sacrifice, Hebrew holidays, etc.)? What makes the Ten Commandments still valid today but the rest of the Old Testament no longer valid?

I know some Christians may disagree with me, but in my opinion, it's the teachings of Christ we should follow, and not the Old Testament law. But the Old Testament is still important. It is the key to understanding the new. It shows us who God is, how He created the universe, and it prophecies how God's son will return in the future.

ag over 2 years ago

This article is too long and convoluted for me to bother to disprove its every point, one at a time. I shall restrict myself, given limited time, to what I see as its most egregious excesses.

The article spends two full pages proving that Earth is an extremely unusual planet, and that planets that could even theoretically support life are probably exceedingly rare. This is absolutely true, and no scientist denies it. However, this provides absolutely no support, even in a statistical sense, for the idea that the earth was designed by some creator. The reason is a simple fact called the "anthropic principle", which christians seem to have a great of difficulty understanding. The anthropic principle says the following: Since we are here talking about how common earth-like planets are, it must be the case that we are on an earth-like planet to begin with. Therefore, even though earth-like planets are very unusual, it should come as no surprise to us that we happen to find ourselves on one, since otherwise, we would not be able to notice the fact.

The same simple counter-argument applies to the common "knob-twiddler-theor y" advanced on page 4. According to this theory, the settings of the fundamental constants seem perfectly tuned to produce a universe capable of life; therefore, they must have been so tuned by some god. This theory again falls to the anthropic principle. Since we are here talking about the settings of our physical constants, it implies that they must be set in such a way that life is possible. In other universes, no one would be there to notice that they were set in that way.

It annoys me - though I have come to expect it - to see him misquote Stephen Hawking yet again. Hawking unfortunately ended one of his books with the sentence "for then we would know the mind of God". Christians anxious to adopt such a great thinker as their own have widely interpreted this to mean that Hawking believes in God. However, on numerous occasions, Hawking has stated very clearly that he does not and never has believed in any sort of higher power, and that in this unfortunate sentence, by "God" he meant only something like "the structure of the universe" or "the laws of physics" or some such thing.

The worst part, really, is that even if some of the pseudo-scientific theories advanced in the article are true - for example, the knob-twiddler theory, that really wouldn't do much at all to advance the underlying claim. Obviously, the author does not care to argue that some arbitrary higher being created the universe - as opposed only to the atheist's view that life evolved on its own. The point of the article is to prove that the particular Christian god advanced in the New Testament is the one that did all this. It is quite impossible to leap from some theory about quantum mechanics to saying that clearly, it must be the Christian God ...